As former elementary science and math education professor, I was always encouraging preservice teachers to teach science and math from a hands-on, minds-on perspective.
My goal was single minded in the sense that for students to learn science and math their curiosity must peaked.
This was always a challenge because most of these preservice teachers learned science and math by rote memorization of facts. Their prior knowledge and experience had few opportunities to actually investigate science phenomena and truly understand the usefulness of math.